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As the 2020 Virginia legislative session began, Democratic Governor Ralph Northam and fellow Democrats continued their push for new gun control bills. In the months since a May 2019 shooting left 12 people dead and four others injured at a Virginia Beach municipal building, Democratic politicians have repeatedly expressed their desire to implement new restrictions such as universal background checks, a ban on certain weapons, and controversial red flag laws.
However, the calls for gun restrictions have not been welcomed by all Virginians. Instead, the push for more gun control has sparked a movement that has expanded across Virginia and continues to grow in other states including California, Illinois, Colorado, New Mexico, and Florida.
Comment: That's the end of the matter as far as international diplomacy is concerned.
But what remains to be answered is how an air-defense system operator mistook a Boeing 737 for a cruise missile.
Unless it was fiddled with in some way, the Ukrainian Airlines jet's transponder should have told the operator of the TOR-1M system that the object he was seeing on his radar screen is a Boeing 737.
Additionally, the plane's appearance on his screen should have in no way surprised him - it was the TENTH flight out of Tehran's Khomeini Airport that night. Prior to Flight 752, the last flight movement there was the departure - from the same runway and in the same direction - of QR8408 at 05:39 local time.
Why then was the air-defense operator surprised by this flight?